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the seed of Divine truth, and must be broken for the outcome and development of the germ of the inner life of the Church. And our Church has had the grace given to her, in her entering into her united form, to set an example to other churches of modifying standards as the times require; and, in so doing, she has acted in the spirit and on the advice of the wise men of God who formed her standards. In the Confession of Faith, chapter xxxi., section 4, we read thus—“All synods and councils since the apostles’ time, whether general or particular, may err and may have erred; therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith or practice, but to be used as our help in both." See also section 5. In this section we have the key furnished to the true spirit in which the enlightened ecclesiastic gives his adherence to the Confession of Faith.
Forms of doctrine, like the human body, must ever be undergoing change for the progress of the life of the Church. No formal embodiment of truth can ever fully express the real truth, and much less can any finite form of truth give full expression to infinite truth. As God, in His providence over His Church, develops the deeper depths of His truth to angels and men, there arises from time to time the necessity of change in the ecclesiastical forms of truth. There is no stereotyped form of Christian doctrine but the inspired Scriptures themselves, nor can the Church with safety acknowledge any other. And if any denomination refuse to modify her Confessions as the development of truth requires, God will do it for her as in the Reformation, the rise of the Associated and Relief Churches, the outcome of the Non-intrusionists, 1843, &c. We are now prepared for the inquiry—
What is the position of our standards in connection with the question of marriage with the sister of a deceased wife, and our reply is—It is one that stands greatly in need of remodelling, as we shall endeavour to show.
There were no laws in any of the nations, affecting marriage, until the Mosaic legislation took the matter up. Nay, it is even questioned by learned men whether the prohibitions in the eighteenth chapter of Leviticus refer to marriage at all. It must be known to well—read men that Sir William Jones, one of the highest authorities on the customs of antiquity among heathen nations, states as his belief that the prohibitions in the Mosaic code have no reference to marriage relationships at all, but were intended simply to prevent among the Jews the revolting practices common among members of the same families in the surrounding nations of heathenism, and because of which the land vomited out the people. Individuals married in accordance with taste, convenience, and prejudice. But to proceed on the view of the Confession.
Adam married bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh — the very flesh and bone taken out of his own body. His sons married their own full sisters—the younger of them may have married their nieces. Abraham, the friend of God, married his own half-sister.
